Monday, April 14, 2008

With the Major League Baseball season upon us, I wanted to mention an article in the initial 2008 issue of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports by Jim Albert, entitled "Streaky Hitting in Baseball" (articles are generally limited to paid subscribers, but limited guest-viewer privileges are available).

Albert, a longtime friend of the Hot Hand website, uses data from the 2005 MLB season to investigate various streakiness-related questions. One of the major conclusions in his abstract is that, "[An] exchangeable model that assumes that all players are consistent with constant probabilities of success appears to explain much of the observed streaky behavior."

Another of Albert's conclusions is that, "...a player who appears unusually streaky in hits doesn't generally appear streaky in strikeouts and home runs" (p. 28).

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News has just come over the wire services that 91-year-old Tommy Holmes, who held one of the longest consecutive-game hitting streaks in National League history, has died.